How  to  Win  the  War 


PRANK  A.  VANDERLIP 


.  .       - 


. 


• 


How  to  Win  the  War 


FRANK    A.   VANDERLIP 

President 
THE  NATIONAL  CITY  BANK  OF  NEW  YORK 


AN  ADDRESS 
December,  1917 


How  to  Win  the  War 


I  like  to  see  so  much  enthusiasm  for  a  job  as  you 
are  showing  here.  You  are  here  to  find  out  what  you 
can  do  to  help  win  the  war.  Now,  what  is  it  that  your 
chairman  wants  you  to  do?  That  is  what  I  want  to 
talk  to  you  about:  what  the  job  is  and  the  necessity 
for  this  work. 

It's  the  biggest  job  America  ever  faced,  or  is  ever 
likely  to  face.  It  is  a  job  so  big  that  none  of  us  has 
walked  around  and  measured  it.  We  have  only  got 
some  little  views  of  the  mountain  that  is  ahead  of  us. 
We  are  just  beginning  to  understand  what  it  means 
to  go  to  war  in  the  modern  sense  and  what  it  means 
to  prepare  America  for  war. 

We  knew  we  were  unprepared.  I  don't  know 
whether  we  knew  how  thoroughly  unprepared  we 
were.  Our  unpreparedness  was  complete.  But  when 
we  come  to  make  an  inventory  of  what  is  necessary; 
when  we  come  to  understand  what  a  gigantic  task  it  is 
to  equip  an  army;  when  we  come  to  know  something 
about  modern  warfare  and  understand  that  it  is  a 
matter  of  equipment  as  much  as  it  is  of  men ;  then  we 
begin  to  see  something  of  the  size  of  this  undertaking. 

We  are  apt  to  measure  things  with  the  yardstick 
of  the  dollar — this  money  value  of  things.  We  have 
seen  this  unprepared  country  go  to  war  and  we  have 
applauded  the  act.  We  have  seen  the  Departments 

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come  forward  with  their  estimates  of  what  was  neces- 
sary to  equip  this  army,  and  we  have  seen  Congress 
appropriate  for  expenditure  this  fiscal  year  nineteen 
billion  dollars. 

Do  you  know  what  a  billion  dollars  is?  I  don't. 
I  have  been  used  to  handling  million  dollar  units  a 
good  deal.  We  know  what  a  million  dollars  is  pretty 
well.  We  can  picture  what  sort  of  a  building,  how 
much  of  a  shop,  what  kind  of  a  store  a  million  dollars 
represents.  Some  of  us  have  had  to  do  with  ten 
million  dollar  transactions.  I  know  pretty  well  what 
it  means  to  float  a  ten  million  dollar  bond  issue.  I 
have  a  little  idea  of  how  much  railroad  track,  how 
much  equipment,  how  many  locomotives  you  could 
buy  for  ten  million  dollars.  Once  or  twice  I  have 
had  to  do  with  hundred  million  dollar  transactions, 
and  then  we  did  have  a  five  hundred  million  dollar 
transaction.  We  have  been  growing  to  this  thing 
by  degrees.  But  suddenly  we  have  this  new  unit, 
a  billion  dollars,  and  we  multiply  it  by  nineteen. 
Congress  did  not  have  any  apprehension  of  what 
nineteen  billion  dollars  meant.  It  appropriated  patri- 
otically what  was  asked  for.  The  Departments  did 
not  have  any  conception  of  what  nineteen  billion 
dollars  meant  to  spend.  The  Treasury  certainly  had 
no  experience  in  raising  any  such  sums.  But  they 
went  at  it,  and  they  went  at  it  under  wise  guidance, 
and  they  have  raised  a  vast  amount  already.  They 
made  such  a  success  of  the  first  two  billion  dollar 
loan  that  three  billions  were  subscribed;  such  success 
of  a  three  billion  dollar  loan  that  four  billions  six 
hundred  millions  were  subscribed. 

We  are  coming  to  see,  however,  that  when  Con- 
gress appropriates  money  there  is  something  else  to 
do.  We  have  to  raise  it,  and  then  we  are  coming  to 

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see  that  when  we  raise  money  there  is  something  else 
to  do:  we  have  to  spend  it.  And  so  we  are  begin- 
ning to  measure  this  task,  not  in  dollars,  but  in 
things;  for  it  is  things  that  we  have  got  to  convert 
these  dollars  into.  Nineteen  billion  dollars !  It  would 
make  a  ring  of  twenty-dollar  gold  pieces  around  the 
Equator,  one  lying  next  to  the  other.  It  is  three  times 
all  the  money  there  is  in  the  United  States.  Every 
dollar  that  this  Government  has  spent  from  its  foun- 
dation, down  through  all  the  wars,  through  all  the 
days  of  peace,  all  it  has  spent  for  pensions,  for  the 
Panama  Canal,  for  constructing  public  buildings — 
every  expenditure  that  it  has  made  from  the  first  days 
of  Alexander  Hamilton  in  the  Treasury  down  to  the 
beginning  of  this  fiscal  year — foots  twenty-six  billion 
three  hundred  million,  and  now  we  are  going  to 
spend  nineteen  billion  dollars  in  a  year!  The  value 
of  all  the  railroads  in  the  country — tracks,  terminals, 
equipment,  locomotives,  cars,  everything — is  less  than 
nineteen  billion  dollars.  What  would  you  think 
if  we  had  to  reproduce  the  railroad  system  of 
America  in  a  year?  It  would  be  something  of  a  job, 
wouldn't  it? 

Now,  of  these  nineteen  billion  dollars,  you  may 
say  at  once,  not  every  dollar  is  to  be  spent  for  Gov- 
ernment purposes.  Why,  we  are  loaning  six  billion 
dollars  of  that  to  the  Allies.  Yes,  but  for  what?  To 
spend  for  things  here  in  the  United  States.  It  is  true 
we  are  spending  some  of  that  for  food;  something 
for  the  products  of  the  farm.  We  are  using  a  little 
of  it  to  pay  the  soldiers.  But  in  the  main,  that  nine- 
teen billion  dollars  is  to  be  spent  for  the  products  of 
the  workshops,  for  the  result  of  manpower,  for  what 
we  can  turn  out  with  the  organized  industry  of  this 
country. 

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This  brings  us  to  the  question:  What  can  organ- 
ized industry  do?  How  big  is  the  industrial  plant 
of  this  country?  Three  years  ago,  the  year  the 
great  war  began,  the  Census  Department  undertook 
to  find  out  just  what  the  value  of  the  manufactured 
products  of  America  was,  and  they  found  that  they 
were  worth  for  that  year  $24,300,000,000.  This  year 
they  would  be  worth  a  good  deal  more.  We  have 
grown;  we  have  expanded  our  industries;  we  are 
working  harder;  more  men  are  at  work;  prices  are 
higher.  But  suppose  that  figure  is  $30,000,000,000 
or  $35,000,000,000.  Put  in  juxtaposition  with  what- 
ever figure  you  may  set  as  the  capacity  of  the 
workshops  this  demand  for  $19,000,000,000  worth 
of  things,  and  what  will  your  conclusion  be?  It  will 
be  that  the  Government  is  going  to  fail  to  do  its 
job,  or  you  and  I  are  going  to  call  on  the  workshops 
for  less  than  we  have  been  calling  upon  them  for. 

That  is  no  theory;  it  is  the  inevitable  conclusion 
from  two  facts;  our  capacity  and  this  demand.  If 
we  are  going  to  continue  to  call  on  labor,  to  call  on 
the  supply  of  raw  material,  to  take  up  shop  room, 
to  make  those  things  that  we  have  been  in  the  habit 
of  asking  for;  if  we  are  going  to  continue  to  demand 
the  things  of  luxury,  of  comfort,  of  convenience  that 
we  have  been  in  the  habit  of  demanding,  the  Govern- 
ment is  going  to  fail  to  do  this  job,  and  you  and  I 
are  going  to  paralyze  the  blow  when  the  Government 
comes  to  strike  it,  because  it  will  not  have  equipped 
this  army;  it  will  not  have  equipped  it  as  it  should. 

Now,  that  view  makes  the  thing  pretty  personal. 
It  begins  to  show  us  that  we  have  some  relation  to 
this  job;  that  the  Government  is  not  a  thing  apart 
that  votes  war,  that  sells  bonds  and  that  fights  the 
battle  out.  This  is  a  democracy.  We  are  part  of 

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that  Government,  and  never  before  was  it  so  clear 
that  the  responsibilities  of  citizenship  come  directly 
to  us  and  demand  of  us  sacrifice;  demand  of  us  that 
we  so  handle  our  personal  affairs  that  we  do  not  get 
in  the  way  of  the  Government;  that  we  do  not  become 
competitors  with  the  Government  for  those  things 
that  the  Government  must  have. 

I  tell  you,  we  have  come  to  a  time  when  we  have 
got  to  weigh  the  expenditure  of  dollars  in  a  new 
scale.  It  is  no  longer  a  question  of  whether  we  can 
afford  to  buy  a  thing  that  we  want.  The  question 
now  is:  Can  the  Nation  afford  to  have  us  buy  it? 
We  have  got  to  look  at  our  personal  affairs  from  a 
national  viewpoint.  We  have  got  to  see  that  we  have 
a  duty  to  society,  a  duty  to  the  Nation — indeed,  a 
duty  to  the  world — in  the  conduct  of  our  personal 
affairs.  When  we  spend  a  dollar  we  put  it  into  either 
one  pan  or  the  other  of  a  balance.  If  it  goes  in  on 
the  side  of  unnecessary  expenditure — if  by  spending 
it  we  employ  labor  unnecessarily,  consume  material, 
needlessly  take  up  room  in  a  workshop — that  pan 
will  go  down  and  the  pointer  will  turn  away  from 
victory.  If  we  put  it  in  the  other  pan  of  the  scales — 
if  we  loan  it  to  the  Government — we  do  two  things : 
We  give  the  Government  credit  and  we  give  the 
Government  room  in  the  workshops  to  get  its  job 
done.  We  release  labor  that  we  have  been  command- 
ing; we  release  material.  We  put  a  weight  in  that 
other  pan  that  turns  the  pointer  toward  victory.  So 
we  have  that  personal  responsibility — that  necessity 
for  weighing  from  the  national  point  of  view  our 
expenditures. 

There  are  three  things  you  can  do  with  a  dollar: 
You  can  hoard  it,  you  can  spend  it,  or  you  can  invest 
it.  Now,  a  hoarded  dollar  is  an  idle  dollar,  and  today, 

7 


with  capital  needed,  it  is  a  drag  on  a  community, 
just  as  an  idle  man  is  a  drag  on  a  community.  An 
idle  dollar  is  a  slacker.  But  there  is  something  worse 
than  a  slacker.  A  slacker  is  not  doing  anything 
actively  to  defeat  the  Nation's  purposes.  But  a  dollar 
that  you  spend  needlessly,  a  dollar  that  employs  labor 
or  consumes  material  in  competition  with  the  Gov- 
ernment, is  an  ally  of  the  enemy;  it  is  a  traitor  dollar. 
That  is  the  way  we  have  got  to  weigh  our  expendi- 
tures. We  have  got  to  analyze  day  after  day  what 
we  are  doing  with  our  money,  and  it  is  no  longer  a 
matter  of  how  much  we  have  or  how  readily  we  could 
make  the  expenditure  to  get  the  thing  we  want. 

We  must  think  constantly  what  is  the  Govern- 
ment's job;  we  must  recognize  how  big  that  job  is, 
how  enormous  it  is  compared  with  the  capacity  of  our 
workshops.  We  want  to  build  a  billion  dollars'  worth 
of  aeroplanes.  We  want  to  spend  two  billion  dollars 
on  ships.  We  have  appropriated  one  billion  eight 
hundred  millions  for  ammunition.  Why,  in  this  war, 
which  will  be  one  in  which  the  transportation  is  done 
in  the  main  by  automobile  trucks,  we  have  ordered 
136,000  horse-drawn  vehicles.  That  would  make  a 
procession  eight  hundred  miles  long.  All  this  gives 
just  a  little  glimpse  of  the  endless  things  we  have  to 
do.  It  gives  us  a  little  conception  of  the  draft  we 
are  going  to  make  upon  manpower,  upon  raw  ma- 
terials, upon  the  workshops,  upon  the  organized 
industry  of  the  country.  And,  remember,  we  have 
taken  a  million  eight  hundred  thousand  men  out  of 
industry  and  have  put  them  into  camps.  Some  of 
them,  too,  have  not  got  overcoats  yet;  a  lot  of  them 
have  wooden  guns,  and  some  of  them  haven't  even 
wooden  guns.  And,  when  we  buy  things  that  we  can 
get  on  without,  we  are  postponing-  the  day  when  they 

8 


will  have  the  overcoats.  When  we  buy  things  that 
are  unnecessary,  we  are  postponing  the  day  that  these 
ships  will  be  ready;  that  they  will  be  manned;  that 
they  will  begin  to  take  any  great  number  of  our  men 
to  the  fields  of  France.  And  it  is  only  when  they 
are  gotten  there  and  there  are  ships  enough  to  keep 
them  supplied,  and  supplies  enough  to  fill  those  ships, 
that  we  shall  begin  to  be  heard  from  in  this  struggle. 

Now,  these  War  Savings  Certificates;  what  are 
they?  They  are  little  postage  stamps — that  is  about 
what  you  know  of  them,  I  suppose.  I  believe  that 
among  all  the  wise  things  that  the  Secretary  of  the 
Treasury  has  done — and  I  think  he  has  done  many 
wise  things — his  advice  to  Congress  to  give  him  legis- 
lation to  issue  War  Savings  Certificates  was  the 
wisest,  the  most  far-reaching  in  its  results,  of  any- 
thing that  he  has  done. 

A  War  Savings  Certificate  is  a  piece  of  paper  upon 
which  is  printed  the  promise  of  the  Government.  It 
is  without  value  except  as  that  value  is  measured  by 
stamps  that  are  attached  to  it.  Those  stamps  will  all 
mature  January  1,  1923.  It  is  our  aim  to  have  them 
on  sale  at  more  places  in  the  United  States  than  any 
other  single  article. 

Now,  let  us  see  what  an  investment  in  War  Sav- 
ings Stamps  is  like.  You  pay  this  month  or  next 
$4.12  for  one  of  these  stamps.  When  you  buy  it,  it 
is  attached  to  a  certificate  that  has  on  it  a  place  for 
twenty  stamps.  Your  name  is  written  on  the  cer- 
tificate, and  after  you  have  attached  your  first  stamp 
your  rights  are  as  complete  as  they  will  be  at  any 
time,  should  you  fill  the  certificate  or  add  any  num- 
ber of  stamps  less  than  twenty.  Now,  what  are  those 
rights?  If  you  hold  the  certificate  for  five  years  you 
get  five  dollars  from  the  Government  for  every  stamp 

9 


attached.  That  means  four  per  cent,  compound  in- 
terest, compounded  quarterly.  But  the  buyer  may 
say:  "What  if  I  want  my  money  before?"  All  right; 
you  can  have  it.  The  idea  is  that  men  are  making  this 
loan  to  the  Government  for  five  years,  but  if  in  the 
exigencies  of  life  the  holder  of  one  of  these  certificates 
needs  the  money,  he  can  go  to  any  one  of  the  fifty 
thousand  postoffices  in  the  United  States,  and,  on 
giving  ten  days'  notice,  get  back  the  money  that  he 
has  paid  plus  one  cent  a  month  increase,  an  increase 
equal  to  three  per  cent,  simple  interest. 

This  is  the  simplest,  the  most  convenient,  and 
surely  the  safest  method  of  saving  that  was  ever 
offered  to  a  people.  It  is  not  necessary  to  go  to  any 
particular  bank,  or  even  to  a  postoffice.  You  can 
buy  these  stamps  anywhere.  You  can  cash  them  at 
any  postoffice.  Suppose  you  lose  this  certificate.  It 
is  of  no  use  in  the  hands  of  anyone  but  the  man  whose 
name  appears  on  it.  If  an  honest  person  finds  it,  all 
he  has  to  do  is  to  drop  it  into  the  nearest  postoffice 
box,  without  postage  or  further  address,  and  the 
postoffice  will  return  it  to  its  owner.  If  a  dishonest 
person  finds  it,  he  has  to  give  the  postoffice  ten  days' 
notice  that  he  is  going  to  commit  forgery — which  he 
is  not  likely  to  do.  So,  you  see,  you  are  pretty  safe. 
But  suppose  it  should  be  burned  up  or  otherwise 
irretrievably  lost;  then  you  would  be  out  of  pocket. 
But  the  Government  will  even  insure  you  against 
that,  if  you  will  take  a  little  trouble.  You  can  take 
this  certificate  to  any  postoffice  and  without  cost  have 
it  registered;  have  the  stamps  canceled.  After  that 
you  have  to  deal  with  the  one  postoffice,  and  when 
you  add  further  stamps  you  have  to  have  them  can- 
celed too.  You  then  have  something  that  is  equiva- 

10 


lent  to  a  passbook.     If  you  lose  it  you  have  only  to 
establish  your  identity  and  your  loss  is  made  good. 

For  people  who  find  $4.12  a  considerable  amount 
the  Government  has  issued  25-cent  thrift  stamps. 
They  are  affixed  to  a  thrift  card,  which  holds  sixteen. 
The  sixteen  will  cost  $4.00,  and  their  only  purpose 
is  to  be  exchanged  for  a  War  Savings  Stamp,  by  the 
payment  of  12  cents  or  13  cents,  or  whatever  the  price 
may  be  in  the  month  that  the  exchange  is  made. 

There  is  the  whole  story.  It  is  simple.  It  can 
be  explained  in  two  minutes.  Any  child  can  under- 
stand it.  And  what  is  it  going  to  accomplish?  It  is  / 
going  to  raise  two  billion  dollars.  That  is  a  big 
thing;  the  biggest  financial  transaction  ever  under- 
taken in  this  country,  excepting  the  two  Liberty 
Loans. 

But  that  is  not  the  great  thing  about  it.  It  is  going 
to  teach  thrift  to  America.  That  is  a  great  thing. 
We  needed  the  lesson.  We  needed  it  desperately. 
We  have  not  stood  up  very  well  under  that  hardest 
test  of  all — prosperity.  We  have  become  careless; 
we  have  become  a  spendthrift  people.  Our  savings 
do  not  compare  per  capita  with  those  of  much  poorer 
countries.  Sweden  has  five  times  as  much  saving 
per  capita  as  we  have  in  this  country.  So  has  Switzer- 
land. We  have  fifteen  million  depositors  in  savings 
banks.  I  believe  we  shall  see  thirty  million  holders 
of  these  certificates.  That  will  be  something.  It  will 
be  thirty  million  stockholders  in  the  United  States. 
It  will  be  thirty  million  better  votes;  better  citizens. 
It  will  be  a  political  accomplishment  that  will  be  hard 
to  measure,  and  if  we  are  going  to  really  teach  thrift ; 
really  build  up  character,  so  that  it  will  stand  self- 
discipline;  make  men  and  women  and  boys  and  girls 
ready  to  forego  the  thing  of  the  moment  that  they 

11 


may  desire,  so  that  they  may  have  something  of 
greater  value  in  the  future;  stimulate  industry;  en- 
courage those  good  old  homely  virtues — the  virtues 
by  which  is  to  be  measured  the  strength  of  a  nation, 
not  by  its  money  nor  by  it  size — then  I  believe  we 
shall  have  gone  a  long  way  toward  recompensing  our- 
selves for  the  whole  money  cost  of  the  war. 

But,  great  as  it  is,  that  is  not  the  big  thing.  The 
thing  we  have  got  to  do  now  is  to  win  the  war.  And 
this  is  going  to  help  us  in  the  most  direct  way  to 
win  the  war.  If  we  do  not  accept  the  lesson — if  we 
do  not  accept  the  personal  responsibility — we  are 
going  to  lose  the  war.  This  war  is  not  won.  It  is 
going  to  be  a  good  many  months  before  it  is  won  by 
a  military  decision.  It  is  going  to  mean  a  vast 
amount  of  preparation.  We  have  got  to  drill  an 
/  army  of  soldiers,  but  we  have  got  to  drill  a  larger 
army:  an  army  of  many,  many  millions;  drill  them 
to  economy,  drill  them  to  self-sacrifice,  drill  them  to 
self-discipline,  and,  until  they  are  drilled — until  we 
have  that  unity  of  purpose  which  it  will  mean  if  we 
have  thirty  million  stockholders  in  the  United  States — 
the  full  force  of  the  United  States  is  not  going  to  be 
felt  in  this  mighty  struggle. 

So  there  is  the  lesson  for  every  one  of  us  to  take 
home  to  ourselves;  not  to  pass  on  to  somebody  else. 
Do  that,  yes;  but  let  us  practise  as  well  as  preach. 
It  is  going  to  be  a  job  of  practising  day  after  day. 
You  cannot  be  good  for  one  hour  of  the  day  and 
do  what  you  please  the  other  twenty-three,  and  take 
much  credit  to  yourself.  You  cannot  buy  a  thrift 
stamp  and  think  that  you  are  doing  your  duty.  In 
the  measure  that  you  have  capacity  to  spend,  in  that 
measure  you  have  got  to  learn  to  have  the  ability  to 
save;  not  for  just  the  good  old  fashioned  reasons  of 

12 


economy,  but  for  the  reason  that  I  have  been  trying 
to  make  plain:  the  fact  that  you  are  interfering 
with  the  Government  when  you  go  on  with  pleasure 
as  usual. 

Suppose  you  wanted  a  chauffeur  and  you  saw  a 
man  driving  an  ambulance.  Would  you  stop  him 
and  say:  "I  can  give  you  a  better  job.  I  will  pay 
you  more  than  the  Government  is  paying  you.  You 
may  be  on  an  errand  of  mercy,  but  get  off,  I  want 
a  chauffeur."  You  wouldn't  do  that.  Suppose  you 
saw  a  man  turning  out  a  shell  at  a  lathe,  and  you  knew 
that  shell  was  going  to  be  an  effective  instrument  in 
a  battle.  Would  you  say:  "Shut  off  your  lathe.  Take 
that  out.  The  cylinder  of  my  automobile  needs  fix- 
ing. I  want  you  to  make  a  bicycle  for  my  boy.  I 
have  a  job;  I  will  pay  you  more  than  the  Government 
is  paying  you."  Suppose  your  wife  saw  a  woman 
making  a  gas  mask.  Would  she  say:  "I  want  a  gar- 
ment made.  I  want  a  new  hat.  Stop  on  that  work." 
Knowing  that  that  gas  mask  might  save  an  American 
life,  she  wouldn't  say  that. 

But  we  are  all  doing  just  that  thing.  We  don't 
think.  We  don't  recognize  that  we  are  competing 
with  the  Government;  that  we  are  tampering  with 
the  equipment  of  the  army;  that  we  are  slowing  down 
the  work  of  the  Government  getting  this  army  pre- 
pared. We  send  our  sons  and  our  brothers  to  the 
front.  Don't  we  want  them  equipped?  Don't  we 
want  to  make  their  sacrifice  as  effective  as  possible? 
Don't  we  want  as  many  of  them  to  return  as  possible? 
Don't  we  want  to  give  them  all  the  protection  that 
complete  equipment  in  armament  can  give?  Well, 
then,  we  must  not  tamper  with  the  equipment  of  the 
army.  We  must  see  that  that  means  each  of  us.  It 
means  what  we  are  spending  needlessly  day  after  day. 

13 


and  it  means  that  we  must  refrain  from  some  of 
that  spending. 

Well,  what  is  this  going  to  mean?  Is  it  going  to 
stop  business?  Are  we  going  to  stop  trade?  Are 
we  going  to  break  up  business?  A  business  man  has 
got  to  live,  you  say.  But  has  he?  A  lot  of  men  are 
going  into  this  thing  who  are  not  going  to  live,  and 
I  have  said  before,  I  would  rather  have  a  receiver 
than  an  executor. 

But  the  thing  is  not  so  serious  as  that  to  business, 
for  this  reason:  We  cannot  make  this  lesson  one 
hundred  per  cent,  efficient.  Loud  as  we  may  raise 
our  voices,  earnestly  as  the  appeal  may  be  made,  we 
are  not  going  to  be  one  hundred  per  cent,  efficient 
with  one  hundred  million  people.  Never  was  there 
such  full  employment.  Never  were  wages  so  high. 
Never  was  there  a  time  when  the  weekly  payroll 
reached  such  a  gigantic  fund.  Do  you  think  all  the 
people  that  have  suddenly  got  so  much  more  money 
than  usual  are  going  to  be  economical?  They  told 
me  in  St.  Paul  this  morning  that  the  jewelry  trade 
in  the  department  stores  was  the  largest  that  they 
had  ever  known.  That  is  just  the  experience  ;n 
England — the  largest  trade  in  jewelry  they  have  ever 
known.  Now,  do  the  best  we  can  with  people  earn- 
ing the  money  that  they  are,  we  are  only  going  to 
make  them  slightly  economical.  We  shall  see  a  dis- 
tressingly large  business  in  non-essentials;  in  luxuries. 
Here,  with  the  farmers  having  a  twenty-one  billion 
dollar  crop,  against  less  than  fourteen  billions  last 
year  and  nine  billions  the  year  the  great  war 
broke  out,  are  they  suddenly  going  to  be  eco- 
nomical and  spend  nothing  unnecessarily?  Why, 
they  will  spend  on  luxuries  more  than  they  ever 
spent,  in  spite  of  all  we  can  do  to  bring  this  lesson 

14 


home,  and  in  doing  it  they  will  tamper  with  the 
equipment  of  the  army.  In  doing  it  they  will  slow 
down  our  work,  put  off  the  date  that  we  are  to  be 
effective  and  lessen  the  number  of  men  who  will  come 
home  alive.  That  is  the  responsibility. 

So,  business  men  do  not  need  to  be  afraid  of  a 
campaign  of  economy.  Bankers  do  not  need  to  be 
afraid  of  it.  Savings  banks  do  not  need  to  be  afraid 
of  it.  What  about  the  savings  banks?  This  is  a 
better  thing  than  the  savings  banks  can  offer.  Is  it 
going  to  break  the  savings  banks?  Not  at  all.  I 
think  it  will  somewhat  decrease  their  new  deposits, 
and  while  it  is  doing  it,  it  will  be  teaching  thrift  to 
the  community,  and  the  savings  banks  will  be  the 
greatest  gainers  of  all  in  the  end.  This  lesson  of 
thrift  will  do  more  to  repair  the  money  ravages  of 
war  than  anything  else  that  can  be  accomplished.  It 
is  going  to  be  a  world  hungry  for  capital,  and  these 
millions  of  new  springs  of  capital — springs  that  in  the 
aggregate  can  flow  a  gigantic  stream  of  capital — will 
do  more  to  put  us  in  the  forefront  financially  in  this 
new  world  that  is  ahead  of  us  than  anything  else 
you  can  imagine.  Don't  you  see  the  importance  of 
this  campaign  from  so  many  sides?  It  makes  the 
mere  raising  of  two  billion  dollars  look  insignificant 
beside  some  of  the  greater  results  that  flow  from 
this  plan. 

I  have  been  preaching — and  I  suppose  it  is  preach- 
ing— for  you  to  be  careful  about  your  expenditures; 
not  to  spend  your  money  on  non-essentials.  I  want 
to  say  a  word  to  you  about  not  spending  yourselves 
too  much  on  non-essentials.  Never  was  there  a  time 
when  there  were  so  many  national  problems;  imme- 
diate problems  and  problems  of  the  future.  I  tell 
you,  we  drew  a  red  ink  line  underneath  our  social 

15 


order,  pretty  nearly,  when  this  war  was  declared. 
The  future  is  going  to  be  very  different  from 
the  past.  Precedent  will  no  longer  be  a  guide.  We 
are  going  to  do  things  in  new  ways.  We  have  seen 
the  Government  occupy  a  new  relation  toward  busi- 
ness; toward  our  affairs.  We  are  going  to  see  state 
socialism  developed  as  we  never  dreamed  it  would 
be.  Right  now  we  are  seeing  the  probability  of  the 
railroads  being  taken  over  by  the  Government;  taken 
over  because  they  are  inefficient  to  do  their  task; 
because  they  cannot  do  what  they  are  called  upon 
to  do.  Now,  why  cannot  they?  I  believe  largely 
because  they  have  not  had  fair  treatment.  Why 

1  haven't  they?  Because  you  have  wanted  low  rates, 
or  thought  you  did  when  you  really  wanted  good 
service,  and  you  have  applauded  the  Government 
when  it  has  imposed  impossible  conditions  upon  the 
railroads.  You  have  not  thought  much  about  the 
railroads  from  the  railroads'  point  of  view.  You  have 
been  thinking  about  your  own  affairs.  If  you  had 
thought  about  the  railroads,  so  that  there  was  a  well 
considered  body  of  opinion  today  as  to  what  ought 
to  be  done  about  the  railroads,  I  believe  that  it  would 
be  done — that  Congress  would  do  it.  The  trouble 
is  that  Congress  does  not  know  what  to  do ;  the  Gov- 
ernment does  not  know  what  to  do;  and  it  will  in 
all  probability  take  the  railroads  over.  We  have  got 
the  railroads  into  a  position  where  they  have  lost 
the  confidence  of  investors.  The  investor  with  a 
free  dollar  in  his  pocket  has  wanted  no  partnership 
in  the  railroads  for  a  number  of  years.  The  railroads 
need  a  billion  dollars  a  year  to  make  them  efficient. 
Where  is  it  corning  from?  Either  they  have  got  to 
be  rehabilitated  in  the  minds  of  investors,  or  the 
Government  has  got  to  furnish  the  money.  Now, 

16 


people  generally  do  not  want  Government  owner- 
ship, but  we  are  going  to  get  Government  control, 
Government  management,  and  ultimately  Govern- 
ment ownership  unless  we  get  a  body  of  opinion  that 
will  speak  with  an  authoritative  voice  as  to  what 
ought  to  be  done  with  the  railroads,  and  that  body 
of  opinion  must  come  from  groups  of  men  like  this, 
who  will  do  some  national  thinking;  who  will  not 
occupy  themselves  altogether  with  their  own  business. 

There  are  endless  problems  that  need  your  minds, 
need  your  experience,  need  your  vision,  and  it  is  time 
to  look  up  from  your  desks.  It  is  time  to  think  of 
something  else  than  your  business;  it  is  time  to  give 
something  of  yourselves  to  your  country  and  to 
society. 

Take  the  matter  of  paper  money.  There  is  not 
a  mail  I  get  that  has  not  a  suggestion,  more  or  less 
disguised,  from  someone  with  a  plan  to  fight  this 
war  on  easier  terms  than  floating  bonds  and  imposing 
taxation,  and  they  think  they  can  fight  it  with  the 
printing  press.  It  cannot  be  done.  Paper  money 
is  always  a  tragedy.  It  would  be  a  double  tragedy 
now,  because  we  have  billions  of  securities  issued  by 
public  service  corporations  whose  income  is  fixed  by 
law  or  by  Government  control,  and  whose  expenses 
would  go  up  as  inflation  drove  up  prices,  and  that 
would  spell  ruin  to  all  those  securities;  loss  to  all 
those  security  holders.  It  is  not  the  means  of  pay- 
ment that  we  are  lacking.  It  is  the  means  of  produc- 
tion. It  is  up  to  groups  of  men  like  this  to  spend 
time  thinking  of  these  national  problems  in  a  national 
way — not  spending  themselves  on  non-essentials  alto- 
gether. 

Perhaps  of  all  the  mischievous  things  you  could 
do  with  your  abilities,  the  worst  is  to  criticize  the 

17 


Government    today    without    knowing    your    facts. 
Most   of   the    criticism   is   misinformed.      You   find 
people  with  grouches  against  the  Government,  criti- 
cizing what  is  being  done,  fretful  about  what  is  not 
being  accomplished,  without  measuring  the  size  of 
the  job;  without  knowing  anything  of  the  devotion 
of  the  men  who  are  giving  their  lives  to  it;  without 
understanding  any  of  the  facts.    Now,  there  is  enough 
to   criticize.     There  is  not   one   of  you   that   could 
expand  his  business  twenty  times  in  a  year  and  not 
have  something  to  criticize.     There  would  be  a  lot 
to  criticize.     There  is  a  lot  here  to  criticize.     This 
war  needs  a  general  manager.     It  needs  somebody 
who   will  put   proper  perspective  on   what  we  are 
doing.    As  we  are  going  now,  we  are  putting  as  much 
emphasis  on  things  that  are  not  immediately  needed 
as  we  are  on  things  that  are  immediately  needed. 
Everyone  charged  with  a  responsibility  for  get- 
ting anything  ready  is  doing  his  level  best  to  do  it. 
Congress  has  made  the  appropriations,  and  things 
that  will  not  be  needed  for  a  good  while  are  getting 
in  the  way  of  things  that  are  needed  at  once.    Prob- 
ably contracts  have  been  too  much  bunched  in  the 
East.     The  thought  was  that  it  would  save  trans- 
portation, but  transportation  has  broken  down.    Too 
much  of  a  burden  has  been  put  upon  it  in  certain 
localities.     We  need  to  have  a  Government  bureau 
which  will  distribute  labor.     It  is  not  enough  that 
you  forego  buying  things  and  throw  people  out  of 
employment,  unless  those  people  become  connected 
with  the  things  which  the  Government  has  to  do. 
Now,  those  things  are  recognized,  and  steps  are  being 
taken  to  improve  them.     You  can  help  by  thinking 
about  these  problems  and  pushing  ideas  along  and 
impressing  your  opinions  upon  Washington. 

18 


And  so  you  have  larger  duties  of  citizenship  than 
you  have  ever  had.  You  have  this  personal  responsi- 
bility to  understand  what  this  war  means  in  things 
—in  things  to  be  produced;  in  the  products  of  the 
workshop — and  so  to  govern  yourselves  that  you  do 
not  get  in  the  way  of  the  Government;  so  to  control 
your  expenditures  that  you  leave  the  Government 
free  right  of  way. 

It  is  a  trite  thing  to  say  that  we  are  not  awake. 
We  are  awake.  We  know  there  is  a  war,  but  the 
thing  is  so  big  we  do  not  comprehend  it.  We  are 
asleep  so  far  as  recognizing  the  full  significance  of 
these  figures  is  concerned — of  understanding  how 
gigantic  the  task  is. 

In  a  French  trench  a  shell  exploded.  Every  man 
in  that  trench  went  down,  save  one — the  young 
officer  in  charge.  That  man  stepped  up  onto  the 
firing  bench  and  looked  out  and  saw  coming  toward 
him  a  charge  of  German  soldiers.  That  man  loved 
France  in  his  very  soul.  He  could  not  bear  to  see 
another  foot  of  France  taken  away.  He  turned  to 
those  men  lying  in  the  trench  and  he  shouted:  "Dead 
men,  get  up !"  And,  stunned  and  wounded  as  they 
were,  enough  of  them  got  up  so  that  they  manned 
the  guns,  drove  back  the  enemy,  and  held  the  trench 
for  France.  And  I  feel  that  Liberty  is  going  to  say 
to  all  of  us:  "Get  up,  dead  men!  Wake  up!  So 
feel  in  your  souls  what  your  duty  is  that  you  can  do 
the  superhuman  thing.  .  Get  up  and  fight  this  war." 


19 


University  of  CaHforna 


A     000  988  441     2 


